BY pAULAb

Menu

Fred the Ficus showed me “the way”

Fred the Ficus is, of course, a rescue. Yes, I even save the odd houseplant that SOMEONE has tossed out ON THE BACK PORCH {my sister}.

So poor Fred was out there all alone in the dark on her back porch; out back where they parked the cars and stored the garbage. I can still picture him. All alone and so sad-looking. He was mostly dead, but he wasn’t yet COMPLETELY dead. So I brought him home where I took him carefully out of his pot and of course some grubby, yucky white thing is down on his roots suckin’ away; PLUS on closer inspection his bark was covered in scale which had to be gently scraped off, AND he was pot bound. Geesh…..poor thing had been tortured over the course of months.

Fred is a Ficus Benjamina, common name is Weeping Fig. Oddly enough my sister gave him his name. I’m surprised I ever let her near him again, but I’m forgiving that way. This was at least 20 years ago. Lex is much improved — today she has 2 sweet & loving daughters and she has now taken up gardening herself.

Now way back in the mists of time …. one day I was alone in the house reading a book. I was sore because I’d been curled up in the same spot forever. So I stretched out my hands, side to side of me, and one of them landed palm out towards Fred. Something felt tingly on my palm. I did it again, about 1 inch away, again tingly feeling on my palm. Weird. So a couple of days go by and I’m sort of wrestling away with the whole “Consensual Reality” of the whole thing. Is that real? Can it be real? Can you REALLY feel a plants energy? Yet I did…or I felt something.

The next weekend we had a bunch of friends over and all in one night I managed to totally freak out each and every one of them. One of our buddies jumped back I think 2 or 3 feet and actually screamed. 🙂 Not a scientific study by any means. Yet interesting just the same.

The funny thing is, he doesn’t do that any more. Fred’s been everywhere I’ve been the last 20 years, and he’s big and shiny as ever. However he doesn’t give off tingles anymore. Oh, once you’ve had a taste you can still sense it…but not like the first time. He did that only for about a year.

Interesting Factoid: The Bodhi Tree, also known as Bo (from the Sinhalese Bo), was a large and very old Sacred Fig tree (Ficus religiosa) located in Bodh Gaya (about 100 km (62 mi) from Patna in the Indian state of Bihar), under which Siddhartha Gautama, the spiritual teacher later known as Gautama Buddha, is said to have achieved enlightenment, or Bodhi. In religious iconography, the Bodhi tree is recognizable by its heart-shaped leaves, which are usually prominently displayed. [Wikipedia]